Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, a newly elected US Senator, said on Sunday television that extreme gun control measures have no chance of being approved by Congress.

Heitkamp, a so-called moderate Democrat and an NRA member, was elected in November by less than 1 percent of the vote in a state that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney won in a landslide.

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, Heitkamp noted that there are other issues apart from gun control that need to be looked at in the aftermath of the Newtown shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School:

“Let’s start addressing the problem. And to me, one of the issues that I think comes — screams out of this is the issue of mental health and the care for the mentally ill in our country, especially the dangerously mentally ill. And so we need to have a broad discussion before we start talking about gun control.”

As far as comprehensive and broad gun control legislation as it is being referred to, Heitkamp — North Dakota’s former attorney general — offered this cautionary note to the Obama administration:

“I think you need to put everything on the table, but what I hear from the administration — and if the Washington Post is to be believed — that’s way, way in extreme of what I think is necessary or even should be talked about. And it’s not going to pass.”

Watch the clip from ABC News with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp talking about new gun control legislation: